The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

Monday, May 23, 2016

Free Trade, the Leftist Issue and the Truth - Raoul Lowery Contreras

by Raoul Lowery Contreras

What
free trade critics never mention is the jobs allegedly lost to trade
relative to the number of jobs that are created by trade.

Free
enterprise and capitalism are being attacked by both presidential
candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Both say they are for “free
trade” but are against free trade deals negotiated over the past three
decades by the United States.

Those
trade deals have benefited American consumers, all of them in a macro
sense, to the tune of billions of dollars in savings and benefits. A few
Americans have lost jobs in the process in a micro sense. They did not
lose their lives, they weren’t taken out and shot like the farmers
murdered by Russian Communists in the Ukraine that objected to losing
their private farms to the government and/or working on government farms
for an equal share of the proceeds in the great communist scheme of
life.

In
the largest sense, the number of lost jobs to trade over the past 30
years is infinitesimal. For example, in the first 20 years of the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) a documented 50,000 jobs a year
were lost. By contrast, two and-a-half million jobs are lost in the
average 18-month recession since 1946.

What
free trade critics never mention is the jobs allegedly lost to trade
relative to the number of jobs that are created by trade. Over time,
certain jobs classifications are more affected than others.
Manufacturing, for example. Though fewer Americans work in
manufacturing, the U.S. is producing more manufactured goods with fewer
people. Technology and automation are responsible. At the same time,
when trade grows so do attendant jobs. The United States Chamber of
Commerce estimates 14 million people work in trade with Canada and
Mexico alone. The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
estimates six million in trade with Mexico alone.

All
50 states trade with Mexico. Question: Do all 50 states have trade
relations with all 28 European countries like they do with Mexico?
Governmental agencies ranging from the Census Bureau to state economic
and travel commissions have joined to produce staggering statistics
about individual states and their trade with Mexico.

On
jobs, a miniscule number of jobs have been lost to Mexico in the 22
years since NAFTA began in January, 1994. The other side of the jobs
story is best reflected in the 692,000 California jobs involved in trade with Mexico; or, 463,000 jobs in Texas working
in trade with Mexico. Or, 14,372 jobs in Vermont, 128,000 in the state
of Washington, or 75,500 in the state of Oregon. All 50 states export
billions worth of goods and services to Mexico and employ millions in
production of goods and service for the Mexican market.

Critics
of trade with Mexico are not only a political anathema for Free
Enterprisers, they strike the heart of the country’s philosophy of trade
and violate our national consumer society’s rights and vision, its way
of life and standard of living.

MACRO=Very
large numbers of workers and people, benefits for the entire
population, the common good for 320 million people that can be measured
in standard of living, national wealth…

MICRO=Tiny numbers of workers, individuals, isolated people in small numbers, the common good is sacrificed for a tiny few…

The Peterson Institute
has calculated that wages lost to trade (such as companies moving out
of the U.S.) can be calculated to one-time loss of $1258 per worker (130
million workers), say in 2008, while the “prosperity quotient” of the
aggregate population in the form of consumer savings though lower prices
and greater choice of products amounts to billions for a period of five
years (2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012). In other words, wages take a
one-time hit in the year the loss occurs. The prosperity quotient is for
five years for the year the wages were lost, thus the prosperity gain
is cumulative at 20 percent per year for five years. Peterson economists
calculate that over $700 billion in prosperity effect occurs over five
years for each static year of wages lost (2008).

The
entire American population benefits by billions in consumer savings, in
wages to the millions working in trade with Mexico and national income
that is unmatched by trade with any nation in the world. For every
dollar we send to China, for example, a grand total of four cents comes
back in the form of China buying our goods and services. For every
dollar we send to Mexico, forty cents comes back to the United States.
So what is the problem?